The reforms of the European Financial Supervisory System An Overview

This report attempts to give a short overview of the most important workstreams in the field of securities regulation within the EU. It further gives a provisional analysis of the future supervisory structure after the adoption by the Council of ministers of the regulation on the future European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) and on the European Systemic Risk Board (ESRB) which are now being discussed in Parliament. The existing directives are all open for review, the Market Abuse, Prospectus and Mifid directives being the first in line. These include works streams like the organisation of the derivative markets, the application of Mifid to dark pools and OTC equity trading. In the field of Credit rating agencies' supervision, ESMA will be directly in charge. The proposed directive on Alternative Investment Managers is being discussed, while CESR is working on short selling, packaged retail investment products, money market fund definitions, and the like.